Pictures are emerging of the final seconds before Flight 1549 came down in the Hudson river.

News channel New York 1 has footage of the jet over the city. Its reporter Dean Meminger was in the Bronx when he heard a loud boom and looked up to fire shooting out of the engine of a plane. The stricken jet can be seen banking before the crash. The video report includes an image of the plane as it comes to rest in the water, its wake clearly visible.

That was dismissed as being too far away, as was the option of heading to Teterboro airport across the river in New Jersey, an official of the controllers' union told Reuters. The best option left was to attempt an audacious river landing.

"If you are choosing between a forest, a city and water, then water is safer every time, so that you can float on the surface, especially if there is land nearby as there was in this case, and the passengers can make a safe exit," an aviation expert, Chris Yates, told the Press Association.